


The Glass Mountain

by exactly13percent (superagentwolf)



Series: The AU Court [4]
Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Blood Magic, Canon-Typical Violence, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-01
Updated: 2018-07-01
Packaged: 2019-05-31 21:27:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15128153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/superagentwolf/pseuds/exactly13percent
Summary: Andreil Week 2018|Day 1: Fairy TaleBased on the Polish Fairy Tale.-The apples from the glass mountain are all anyone cares about. Anyone but Andrew, that is. Andrew is just trying to keep Kevin alive, despite Kevin's attempts to reach those apples again.The apples, and the captive prince at the top of the mountain.





	The Glass Mountain

There once was a glass mountain.

Atop it grew a tree, its golden apples shining in the sun. They blinded those that passed by and cast rays of light far beyond the mountain. These apples attracted visitors from far and wide. Everyone spoke of how beautiful the apples were, and how sweet they must have tasted.

Andrew thought the mountain was a fucking waste of space.

Kevin was conflicted. He’d come from the castle. Andrew thought Kevin was an idiot, but that didn’t change anything. Kevin wanted…something. Some days, it was to burn the castle to the ground. Others, it was to go back in and cry into the pillow on the bed he’d left behind. Andrew had no patience for the latter days.

“There are people in there,” Kevin said. _People like me,_ he didn’t say. Andrew didn’t care. He said as much.

“But you could make it. You’ve been so close,” Kevin said.

Kevin’s problem is that he wants someone to make it. Someone else. Andrew wants to tell him _get up and do it your goddamn self,_ but he doesn’t. Instead, he listens to Kevin talk to the others and go on about the apples. How the people in the castle were using them to control poor souls like himself. How they had taken from each of their families in little ways.

Andrew kicks his shoes up onto a table in the corner of the Foxhole Guild and tunes him out.

* * *

There are parades, sometimes. The entire court will come down from the castle and flaunt. Andrew likes to be at the front of the crowd—not because he wants to see, but because he wants to look at the not-Prince. The second child. Riko.

The glass mountain reflects light onto the city and the doors to the castle open. They come in a procession, with black glass adorning them. Wrists and necks and heads all shining with inky spheres.

The inner court has wings.

The wings are stupid. Andrew wonders what would happen if they broke. He thinks he’d like to see Riko react to that—his precious wings, all scattered on the ground. Riko likes to move as if his feet don’t touch the ground. He likes to move through crowds that flinch back from his glass and blood-red paint.

Andrew doesn’t shrink back. He watches at the edge of the street, arms crossed over his chest. He’s there for Kevin; to keep him from running out into the street or collapsing on his knees. Still, it’s fun when Riko catches their eyes and betrays just a little of the hate hiding behind his porcelain mask.

Kevin is the one obsessed with the castle and the court. Andrew doesn’t care. He has no reason to care.

Not even when the city whispers about an enchanted princess. They’re ridiculous rumors. Kevin has made it clear that there is no princess.

Not quite.

* * *

The enchanted prince is locked in his tower.

He looks down on the city and wants so badly to be out that his hands hang from the tallest window, like the air will take him in its arms and deposit him to the waiting ground below.

That won’t happen. Neil knows that if he lets the wind take him, he’ll fall to his inevitable death.

He isn’t that willing to go. Yet.

No one really knows—except for the court—what the glass mountain is made from. The people ooh and ah when the mountain changes, its landscape morphing over time. Neil knows that the glass is like a graveyard. Each bump and ridge, each curve and soft sculpture, is a body. Someone who has tried to make it to the castle and failed.

It’s a good thing they don’t try in the middle of the day. Neil wonders what the people would think if they saw a man plummet do his death on the crystalline rocks below.

Riko comes into the room at nearly five in the morning, as usual. Nathaniel is ready in uniform—the draping of fabric like funeral garb, black and gauzy. He is exposed from waist up; the pants are open at the sides, exposing his legs in case Riko decides to take more.

The name of the game is fighting. The court is war. Each member of Riko’s circle trains; they are warrior royalty, hand-picked for their cunning and efficiency. They wear their uniforms differently; they are covered. Efficient and protected, where Neil is vulnerable. Neil still spars with them, goes with them against common soldiers that are so much fodder.

Except when Nathaniel bleeds, Riko takes the blood.

Nothing about him is kind. Nothing about the court is kind. Nathaniel’s blood is precious—enchanted. It’s taken from him and passed around the court, like some sort of wine. Nathaniel hopes it tastes bad. If it does, no one says anything. They drink and bond, the drops on their tongues humming in harmony.

“You must be faster,” Riko says, after he kicks Nathaniel’s legs out from under him. They’re supposed to be fighting the other side, not each other.

Nathaniel doesn’t remind Riko that he’s the fastest person in the court. He pushes himself upright and moves on.

He hopes his blood tastes like vinegar.

Or salt. Salt might be better.

* * *

It’s a tournament day. The summer palace is open only to those that meet the strict requirements. The Foxhole Guild are some of those that are invited.

The invitation is a backhanded compliment. Andrew watches the way Kevin’s hand curls around it and nearly crumples it. Riko has invited them to laugh at them. He wants to watch Kevin fall at the Grand Tournament in a few months, so he invites the Foxes. To watch them scrape their way through events and cling to the bottom of the ladder.

The court has a room, at the far end of the arena. It’s the Nest. Every so often, people will be taken into the Nest. High businessmen and others looking to grease the palms of the Ravens. The royalty. Andrew doesn’t pay attention to it, other than to note who comes and goes, and when. Kevin is much more focused on it.

“Pay attention,” Andrew says, when someone nearly knocks Kevin into the stands. He slaps Kevin hard across the back of the head.

They’re in the second half of a match, and they’re not doing well. Andrew can’t really care enough about it to do anything, so he watches the ragtag Foxes fumble and argue among themselves. The guild master, Wymack, calls them into a time-out halfway through the final leg.

“This isn’t working,” he says, opening the conversation and an argument.

Andrew hangs to the edge, letting the conversation wash over him. He remembers before. The hands he passed through, person to person, and the day some well-dressed boy had come to him with the same face. _You’re my brother. Twin._

Someone bumps into Andrew. He tenses. This shouldn’t happen. He is reaching for his knives, ready to gut the intruder.

He freezes when the stranger’s hood slips.

The stranger is the worst. He is pretty in a painful way; his hair is the bright red-gold of fire and his eyes are a blue, as piercing as the glass of the cursed mountain.

He is scarred.

“What are you doing here?” Kevin asks. He is gasping, panicking. Andrew barely registers the boy passing him, moving toward Kevin.

Andrew catches the boy’s arm and holds his knife to his wrist. “Don’t.”

The boy looks him dead in the eye and tears his arm away. The Foxes gasp. The knife bites through flesh and the boy cups his wrist with his other hand, letting the small trickle collect in his palm.

“Take it,” the boy says, stepping toward Kevin. Andrew can’t even begin to put the ends together. They hang loosely in his mind, torn string and broken bonds.

Kevin shakes his head. “I can’t—”

“ _Take it_ ,” the boy repeats. His words are ragged and hard. He presses a hand to Kevin’s mouth. The Foxes shout.

Someone tries to pick the boy up but his hands fly wide, touching their faces. There are cries of disgust and surprise and then the boy is facing Andrew, pausing. He hovers there, something haunted in his eyes.

“May I?” the boy asks. He asks. He holds his bleeding wrist and doesn’t look at Andrew; he looks into him. In. So far that Andrew wants to warn him about falling.

Andrew is curious. “You may.”

The wrist offered to him is scarred, too. Andrew lets the boy tilt it; they don’t touch, but Andrew catches the blood that falls onto his mouth. He almost doesn’t want to taste it, but he does. He lets it onto his tongue and it hums with some absurd music; struggle, will, sorrow, and something fluttering. Something like hope. He hates it.

He wants more.

The boy disappears. Wymack doesn’t know what to say. The Foxes stand in a daze and then Kevin licks his lips—an afterthought. He is focused on the game.

“We will win. We can win. Now.”

The Foxes win the game. Just by one, just at the last moment, but they win. Riko stands in the Nest, a picture of blood-red paint and fury. It is worth it to see his expression.

But Andrew sees the color on him and realizes where it came from.

* * *

After the tournament, Seth gets the stupid idea to climb the mountain.

Andrew blames the blood. He blames the way it made things seem possible. He doesn’t care that Seth throws himself to his death. Allison cares, of course, from the way she nearly tears her room to shreds. Andrew isn’t around to see it, but he believes it.

Like all the others, Seth’s body never comes back.

* * *

Neil curls his around his knees. He is cold.

He’s lost so much.

Riko knew, somehow—or he simply assumed and wanted it to be true. He took Neil after the tournament, locking them in a dark room. The velvet curtains were so thick that Neil had almost suffocated. Riko took and took and left Neil nearly empty.

The King couldn’t have known. Riko had done something unforgivable. He took from Neil and then paid his silvers to the man with the boat. Neil was cold by the time he was put in a wrap of cloth, left in the same black gauze he always wore. The night chill clung to his skin but he couldn’t feel it past the chill coming from within his body.

They took Neil somewhere far into the city. There were trees and grass. Neil was happy, for a little while, to see them. To look at the night sky. He was dumped from the big man’s arms before he could enjoy it, to hit the hard ground like so much trash.

Neil breathed. Just breathed—counting each breath, each step closer to death.

Before he closed his heavy eyes, he saw a face. Pale like the moon, unreachable, with the earth-eyes he remembered from the tournament. Neil wanted to hold the moon in his hands.

He spoke, but Neil could not answer. He fell into the darkness of the sky.

* * *

This was the enchanted prince, Kevin says.

No shit, Andrew says.

“Why’d they leave him here?” Wymack asks. He is uneasy lines and a mouth pressed thin, into a line. He knows better than most the nature of the castle. Unlike Kevin, he has not even a lingering attraction to the golden place.

“Not they. Riko,” Kevin corrects. He looks like he’s going to be sick.

Dan interrupts the conversation. She’s the one in charge, when they’re doing jobs. “Before that, you said enchanted. What do you mean?”

“The blood,” Nicky says. The tiny ring in his ear blinks when he turns his head. “Wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” Kevin says. “I don’t know how it works. Just that it does.”

Andrew tunes the rest of the conversation out. They argue and argue. At some point, Abby comes in, her medic’s bag in hand. She talks in hushed tones with Wymack and gestures to the room at the back of the guild, with a lock that’s now always turned.

_Why’s he so quiet? I don’t know. Just is. He won’t make a noise? No. Enjoy it._

The voices are annoying. Andrew blocks them out with dead static, but still they linger. Still, they hang at the corners of his mind. He waits for the right time and takes the tiny potion Kevin extends to him, feeling the bitter numbness of it on his tongue.

The voices go away.

* * *

“It won’t last long,” the boy says. Kevin stands at the foot of his bed, like he wants to both reach out and thinks he shouldn’t. “We don’t have much time.”

Andrew thinks there are things that don’t match up. The boy’s name is Neil, Kevin says. Neil, but there’s something in the way he says it that indicates a half-truth. Andrew doesn’t care for those. They’re half lie. Neil is quiet but sure, telling them in clipped words that Riko drained him and threw him out like so much trash. He tells them that the Grand Tournament is coming up, and if the Foxes want to win—to out the current royalty from the castle—they will have to take Neil’s blood. They will have to use him.

“Why would we do what they do?” Wymack asks. Idealistic fool. “There must be other ways.”

Neil doesn’t answer. He doesn’t, but Andrew sees the look in his eyes that says Wymack is right. He is right, but Neil is afraid.

Andrew doesn’t have time for fear.

Two days later, when Neil is able to walk, Andrew takes him to Eden’s Twilight. The pleasure house caters to those that are turned away from others; men in the company of men, women with women, those with rules and boundaries and very specific tastes. The bar is never rowdy and the rooms are always clean. Andrew goes with Aaron—the brother he can barely bring himself to look at, some days—and Nicky and Kevin. They go in the deep night and Neil seems to notice that they avoid the other Foxes’ quarters, but he doesn’t say anything.

It’s the first smart thing Andrew has seen him do.

He struggles at the pleasure house. Andrew can see it—conflicting desires to flee and hold his ground warring with each other. Neil’s instinct is to run, but he holds his ground against Andrew. It’s stupid.

It’s stupid that Andrew keeps searching Neil’s blue eyes and ends up forgetting what he’s looking for.

Then Neil is drugged and desperate and instead of the blood Andrew had expected—instead of his secrets spilling out, he’s spilling pain and betrayal and sorrow. Neil is spilling at the edges and he pays a man in the corner to knock him out with a swift hit.

He doesn’t make sense. Neil doesn’t make sense, but he’s not dangerous, and that’s all Andrew needed to know. Later, when they return to a hidden hovel in the winding streets of the city, Andrew gives Neil a key.

He hates the way that Neil looks at it, traces it with his finger. He hates and hates, but he doesn’t fight. He can’t.

Neil isn’t someone that needs fighting.

* * *

They’re about to start practice and Neil mechanically reaches for his shirt the second he sets foot onto the field.

“Whoa—” Wymack starts, holding his hands up like he’s going to pull the shirt back down.

Neil does something stupid. He backpedals, his heart pounding, and he moves so fast he knocks back into the person standing behind him. A compact body with pale features and warm, earth-eyes that are glazed over with a sheet of ice. Andrew’s hand rests on Neil’s neck.

“Stop.”

Neil knows it’s addressed to him, but Wymack thinks otherwise. The man grimaces and looks at Neil, something unreadable in his gaze. “Don’t you dare be more afraid of me than you are him.”

Neil knows it would be stupid to explain. How would he say that his father is the one that has made him this way? His father, the royal executioner, that’s locked away in a cell somewhere? _They would turn me to ash before they turned me out._

Kevin tells Neil that they aren’t using his blood yet. His tone says he doesn’t like it. Instead, they run through the drills that the Ravens use. They go through them and Neil, without the beatings of a half-crazed Riko and the subtle sabotage of his teammates, does even better than he ever has. When practice is over, Nicky looks at him with unshielded admiration.

“Enchanted prince,” he echoes, shaking his head. Neil hasn’t decided what to do about the kiss at Eden’s Twilight, but he decides he’s not angry at Nicky. He knows who gave him the drugs in the first place.

Practice goes on like this for the next few days. Neil grows frustrated. He wants them to get better, faster, but all he gets is refusal. _No blood._

He wants to say, _blood is all I have left. Take it._ Instead, he bides his time and learns his way. There is only one other choice left to him, after blood. If they don’t take it from him, he has to take them into himself. He has to let them in—and that is the more painful, when he is the one that will be leaving. When he is the one that will die with their names on his lips.

* * *

Nicky laughs and bends down. Neil holds up a hand impassively, but the words that leave his mouth are anything but impassive. “Please don’t kiss me again.”

“Again?” Andrew echoes. He shouldn’t feel a sharpness at the word. He shouldn’t feel at all.

Nicky’s eyes widen. There is fear. Andrew knows, with sudden and sharp detail, that this is a conversation that will end in blood.

Neil looks at Andrew with that same vacant blue, the same pale-gray lines scarring the color. “You knew. You gave him the drugs.”

Kevin is tense at his desk. Nicky opens his mouth to say something, but Andrew is already moving. He has his knife out, swiping to press against his cousin’s neck in warning and promise, and then it catches on something.

Something warm hits his cheek and Andrew pauses, one hand on Nicky’s shoulder and the other hanging in the air. He smells blood.

“I’m not angry about it,” Neil says. He’s looking at Nicky, as if he hasn’t just reached out into the path of Andrew’s knife. His arm is bleeding, but his hand rests on Nicky’s cheek. “I was angrier about the drugs. That I couldn’t get away. You know not to do that. Don’t you?”

Neil’s voice is soft—too soft, and Andrew tastes copper on his tongue. Copper and tears and he hates how familiar it is. Neil’s blood sings to him. He feels like it’s singing him to the bottom of the ocean.

“I do,” Nicky promises. He’s already crying. Neil nods, a silent _good_ , and Andrew has released Nicky before he can recognize what is happening.

Kevin watches, wide-eyed, from his desk. Neil holds Nicky and Andrew turns on his heel and leaves.

* * *

Nicky’s family, Neil learns, is part of the upper class. The city’s desirables, whose status earns them some deference from the court. Apples at the end of the year, polished and shining but devoid of any true value. They mean nothing if you can’t reach the court.

A letter arrives. Nicky’s family wants to see him, but they want to see Andrew and Aaron, too. They want their nephews to come. Nicky goes to Neil, because he had welcomed Neil the second the prince had arrived.

“Please. This could help us—it could help all of us. If we have their support, we could find someone to help. Someone who knows your enchantment, even. We could—”

Nicky goes on. Neil listens and knows, with sudden certainty, what it will cost. He makes a promise and goes to Andrew.

“Will you go?”

There are muscles in Andrew’s jaw that appear as he works through the request, like a wild animal with a bone. He looks at Neil with a storm in his eyes. He vacillates between interest and disinterest, and Neil can never catch him in one place. Neil wants to know him so badly it scares him.

“You don’t know what you’re asking,” Andrew says. Neil tries harder, because all Nicky has ever wanted is something between himself and his cousins. Because all Neil wants is to leave something better in his wake, and not the destruction that he has so helplessly caused, before.

Neil tries. “Just this. I’ll go. Kevin will go. Why is it so hard with you three?”

He catches the word that makes Andrew’s eyes flicker. He notices it and he hides his reaction, because his heart has dropped and there’s bile in his throat. He remembers the way Andrew had looked when Neil had approached him at the tournament, and the way he’d reacted when Neil asked for permission. The way Andrew had so violently responded to the truth about Eden’s Twilight and Nicky’s kiss.

Andrew agrees. He doesn’t respond after that, locked away in whatever distant place he goes to, and Neil lets him.

They travel for a festival. The table is laden with food and Andrew is only just civil. The story unfolds before Neil in scraps; the way Nicky’s parents find him abhorrent but redeemable, the way they treat Aaron like the unbroken one, the way they fear Andrew almost as much as they ignore him. The scars lie beneath the skin here, and Neil feels he is picking apart layers to look at the red flesh beneath.

Andrew is inside and Neil feels it for the first time.

He’d ignored it before—the tug at his blood, in his veins. It was the enchantment, he told himself, and he couldn’t let it control him. He couldn’t let himself care. Except the tug pulled at him somewhere it shouldn’t have and Neil was out of his seat in a second, taking the staircase and ignoring the creak of wood beneath his feet. He threw the chamber door open to a man tearing at Andrew’s trousers, a tableau of horror and violence. Andrew was holding the headboard, but his hands were free. He was only grounding himself with it.

Neil broke.

He screamed, throwing himself forward. Andrew didn’t notice; couldn’t care. The stranger lifted a bottle and smashed it—Andrew fell to the side, blood at his temple. Neil saw it and reached for it. _I can use it,_ he thought. He wanted to use it. He wanted the taste on his tongue.

But he couldn’t. He couldn’t ask; not with Andrew halfway out of the world.

Neil lifted his hand, hoping the next blow would cut him, but instead, a rough hand threw his shirt up. Despite his bravado, Neil yelped. The air was cold and he felt a drawing, iron chill in his chest. He was exposed. The scars were exposed. The man didn’t seem to care; he was pulling at everything, everywhere, and Neil could only try to kick at his jaw. His hands scrabbled for a trace of glass on the sheets. He found one and lifted it, but the man thought he was attacking. The stranger laughed and pinned Neil’s arm to the bed. Neil was thrown over, onto his stomach, to a familiar string of _pretty thing_ and _soft skin for one with scars_.

“You’ll look at me with those blue eyes when I fuck you.”

His head pulled back at an awkward angle, neck straining and breath coming in gasps.

Someone came in.

Neil barely noticed the grip releasing him. He only faintly registered a yell and the noise that accompanied it. The dying gurgle of the stranger, his body toppling to the ground. Andrew was sitting up. He was looking at Neil with something beyond breaking. Neil reached for him—wanted to tell, just a little, if he was still real. If he hadn’t faded out of existence entirely, to that other place he went when his eyes were staring at nothing.

Neil never had a chance. The evening ended in blood and tears and all Neil knew was that he’d stopped it, somehow. When they returned to the Foxhole, the others were waiting. Abby, with her medic’s kit. The Foxes, in varying states of disarray. Neil set foot on the grass and the first thing he felt was Nicky’s hand in his, holding him tightly like it could keep him from drifting away.

It did.

* * *

“He’s with Bee,” Wymack says, when Kevin ventures to ask.

Kevin is angry. It’s stupid, he says. Dangerous. There’s not much time. Neil is only half listening.

Bee will send him to the sanitarium. Andrew will be there, in the same place that Riko’s people are, in the grip of people that won’t hesitate to break him. Neil thinks about the bedroom and the man holding him down and knows he can’t let it happen.

He should be happy that the enchantment is settling in. Instead, Neil feels the gravity of his decision. Doing this—shifting his blood ties—means that Riko can hurt him. That Neil won’t be worth anything, after he makes his deal. He will be useless and worthless and he will be ready to die.

Taking another family is not something the Ravens will tolerate.

Neil drops his blood into a basin. He closes his eyes.

 _I knew you would return,_ Riko says, with his slow ice and assured cruelty.

 _You will ensure that they do not come near him,_ Neil says. No room for argument. _If you do not, I will use my mother’s people. They do not have the same allegiance that the Butcher does._

He can almost hear the way Riko stings at that. It gives Neil satisfaction now, even if he knows it will mean more pain, later. Riko chuckles.

_You will come to us. You will stay. You will finally bind your blood._

Neil almost laughs. He lets the connection go and wonders what Riko will say, once he realizes Neil has already set his knots. Hitched himself to the Foxes. Neil can’t tie himself to the Ravens now, even if he wanted to. Riko will realize it and then he’ll only have two options—send Neil back, or kill him and risk his power flying free and to the Foxes. One man was enough to fight, especially if his bonds weren’t strong enough. A team of them, fighting for a martyr, was much worse.

Neil goes to Kevin.

“You can’t,” Kevin says.

“I can.”

* * *

Andrew knows as soon as he is admitted that something is wrong.

The nurses look at him with barely-veiled contempt. They slam his food down in front of him, but make no move to touch. There is a barrier around him a mile high and no one dares to climb it. He is encased in glass.

“Tell me what he did,” Andrew says, when one of the nurses gives him his dose. It’s not real, by now; so many days have gone by that Andrew knows he is no longer being given a potion. He has been weaned off like a sick creature, while too-calm doctors talk to him and poke at his raw mind.

The nurse ignores him. Watches until Andrew takes the draught and deposits the glass bottle onto a tray.

“Tell me what he did.”

Hour by hour. Day by day. His fingers itch and his blood boils.

“Tell me what he did. Tell me what he did!”

Andrew slams his hands against the door. He wants to rip it off, just to be tranquilized and drift off. Just to get away from the increasing _feeling_ that burdens his chest.

“Tell me what he did!”

* * *

Riko knows the second Neil steps onto the court. He turns from cold cruelty to outright fury, landing blow after blow. Neil wants to laugh and say _you didn’t even last,_ but Riko doesn’t leave the breath in his lungs to say half of it.

Later, Jean tends to Neil.

“I’m sorry,” Neil says, because he really did start to care for him. He cared for Kevin and Jean; he cared for some of the Ravens. Thea, when she’d been around. “You’ll be with them. After.”

 _After I die,_ Neil doesn’t say. Jean knows. Jean has always known things; he’s always hung back, keeping himself going, watching Kevin slip through his fingers and then Neil. Except Neil is back, and now Jean has some hope.

“You don’t have to,” Jean says. Desperate. The same way he’d always tell Neil to submit. The same way he will in the next few days.

Neil agrees. “I don’t. Take care of each other?”

Jean scrubs the blood away. He doesn’t have the energy to spare water or salt.

“Yes,” he promises. The only promise he’s ever made. “Yes.”

* * *

Neil is deposited again at the guild. This time, he’s upright. This time, he’s worse.

Kevin’s eyes flicker over the scarring. The proprietary stamp on his cheek, like the one on Kevin’s. He’s appalled by the little tattoo.

“Why?”

“It’s the only way they own me, now,” Neil says simply. He knows that Kevin knows. Can see the realization hit, followed by nausea.

 _I gave myself to you. I don’t need anything back._ Neil keeps his mouth shut. It hurts to breathe. Hurts to talk. Everything hurts, but he is curiously without pain. He reminds himself that every hit and burn and push is one that Andrew didn’t feel. That the Foxes didn’t feel.

When Nicky sees him, he doesn’t cry. Somehow, he holds himself together and pulls Neil into his body softly. He holds Neil’s head with his hand, letting him acclimate to the touch, waiting. Neil is shocked at how right it feels. _Safe?_

“Safe,” Neil says, not realizing his thoughts have leaked out. He’s too weak from being at the castle. Nicky does cry then, his tears finding their way onto Neil’s head. Neil can feel them resting there, a low melody of guitar and the taste of honey in his mouth.

“You’re safe,” Nicky says, quiet and fractured. “Safe. You’re home. You’re safe.”

Nicky is warm and Neil lets his heat revive aching bones, allowing it in with the sad knowledge that he will never be able to return it. Not as long as he has time left.

After the Foxes have done their diligence, Aaron comes to Neil. He appraises the tattoo, perhaps with an air of detached interest. He doesn’t rest on the scars and bandages. For the first time, Neil is grateful to see him—the twin at odds—and grateful for his silence. For the way he instead says, “We’re going to get Andrew. You’re coming.”

Neil is tucked between Nicky and Kevin for the trip. He finds himself drifting and fights to stay awake. He’s lost track of days. Time. It had been so easy, from his tower. The sun lighting the clouds, the moon making them blue. The cycle of the day played out at eye level. Here, on the ground, it’s so much harder. He can’t feel the burn on his skin or the chill in his veins.

The people at the sanitarium openly stare at Neil. They have vile eyes that Neil doesn’t care about. His gambit with Riko paid off, but they don’t care about any of that. They only care that they were deprived of a body. Neil feels Aaron shield him, just a little, and tries to hold back his surprise. _I wonder if Andrew asked, or if I passed some test._ He hopes things change. Enough. A little. He needs the connection. The bond to tie his blood to.

Andrew comes into the room they’re waiting in. Neil feels the dry sorrow when he sees no spark—no interest. His face is flat and clear. He barely stops to inspect Kevin and Aaron before turning and leaving the way he came.

Neil follows the others and Andrew. His mouth tastes of apples. He can hear ringing in his ears, crystalline; the soft, ghostly notes of glass animals in his ears. Humanoid cries for help. He pushes it all away and focuses on the constant; Andrew’s pale head and the black bands at his arms, taken from Neil’s hands without a second look.

* * *

Andrew waits. He sits with smoke wafting around him. He’s noticed that Neil always conflicts with fire—will draw back from its flame but breathe it in all the same. He likes the smoke, as far as Neil likes anything.

The roof of the guild has a rail along the edge—or as much of a rail as it can be considered, a few inches high and more decorative than anything else. Andrew sits with his feet touching it, close to the end of the ledge. He hears the door open and someone approaching.

Andrew only has to inhale to know. His cells are compelled; drawn toward the person he doesn’t want to look at. It might be the enchantment. Andrew hates it.

“Did I break my promise, or did you keep yours?” Andrew asks once Neil has settled. The scars are of interest; Andrew pops his thumb under a bandage and peers beneath. There are healing ones and newer ones, their edges red and thin.

_I will protect you._

_I will keep him safe._

Twin promises. A line of succession, but not success. Andrew doesn’t break promises. He speaks in truth. The marks on Neil’s face are an ugly lie. They make him into something he is not. Property.

Andrew thinks of the glass box and how no one came near. Thinks of the marks he can see on Neil and thinks of what he can’t. Neil held down as he reaches for Andrew.

“Neither,” Neil says. He lets Andrew rouse before he continues. “I went.”

“Why?”

“Riko has people there. So do I.”

Andrew feels the sky tilt. It’s the blue of Neil’s eyes and the chill there, grasping far past its time. Except when he looks now, he can see the little bubbles, capturing warmth, the last gasps of a drowning man.

“I don’t need you to protect me,” Andrew says. _You need someone to save you, too._ But he’s wrong. Wrong, for the first time, when Neil looks down at the ground below and doesn’t reveal his secret, again.

“They burned my mother when she tried to run.”

Andrew sucks in a breath. “We’re not playing this game.”

He started it. Before the bedroom; after Eden’s Twilight. Andrew had asked for a truth, still unable to let go of the things that didn’t add up, and Neil had given him one. They traded them the same way they traded smoke, on the roof and in passing hours.

“We didn’t get far,” Neil continues, like he didn’t hear. “She was beaten and tied to a stake. I was made to stand before her and watch. My skin—”

Andrew stops him with a hand against his mouth. He doesn’t need this truth and Neil doesn’t need to give it. Andrew hates the way his hand feels warm, the strange buzz that gathers where he can feel lips on his palm. Something changes in Neil’s eyes. Electricity where there was empty sky. A spark of something. His lips are parting and Andrew feels as if the breath coming out from between them is a drug.

He feels.

Andrew withdraws. He is more clear-headed than he’s been in years.

“He didn’t keep his promise. Not all the way,” Andrew says. He can see the moment it hits a chink in Neil’s armor and he wonders that the small gap wasn’t there before. _I made that._ Andrew, somehow, made the tiny crack that reveals something soft beneath.

Neil opens his mouth but nothing comes out. He shakes his head and tries to come up with something. He’s not breathing. He has a habit of doing that and Andrew wants it to stop. Wants to say that Neil isn’t allowed to go; he can’t go, not while Andrew still has a promise to keep.

There’s a flash in Neil’s blue eyes, pain and then gone, before he closes his eyes for a moment. When he opens them, he is self-contained again.

“I’m going to kill him,” Neil says softly. The same old prayer. Andrew doesn’t answer. He takes Neil’s key from his pocket; the one Aaron gave him at the sanitarium, before they left—the one to indicate that Neil really had gone.

Andrew throws the key over the roof. Neil follows its path. He goes down to retrieve it and when he does, he looks up at Andrew and lifts it to his chest. It presses against his heart and Andrew hates that he feels, but he can’t stop it—so, he stops trying.

* * *

They are four weeks from the Grand Tournament. Neil is healed in short order and they start practicing, again. No one comments that the Foxes seem oddly cohesive, now. They work in ways they hadn’t before. Neil can still taste the salt of Nicky’s tears in the dark. He gathers pieces as they go—the way Allison’s breath feels ghosting against his face when she applies a salve to his cheek. Renee’s willingly offered charm, a tiny locket with her and Allison’s hair twined together. The way Matt steps in front of a falling box for Neil, nicking himself and letting Neil care for it. Dan passing him a half-finished pint she’s drinking from that Neil doesn’t want but needs, because he needs the tie.

Kevin is already under his skin. Neil doesn’t have anything to do, there.

Andrew…

Andrew.

Neil sits with him at Eden one night, the others unwinding after a long session. He sits and lets the sounds wash over him, trying to ease himself out of the crush like he’s tuning a radio. The barman says something that has Neil wondering.

“Why does he think you did this?” Neil extends his wrists, just scarring over. Andrew’s eyes are colder when he sees the scars, but not at Neil. He glances at the bar, a line of irritation appearing between his eyebrows, but there’s some acceptance in his face.

That’s new. Sober, Andrew has a curious few emotions. “Why do you think?”

“I thought—”

“I do hate you,” Andrew says, slowly. He has a finger tracing the edge of his glass. Neil tries not to follow it. “But I would give some of myself to you, if you wanted it.”

Neil’s breath catches in his throat. He feels foggy for a reason that doesn’t entirely have to do with the growing din around him. Andrew catches his eye, gaze narrowed, and then he slips off his chair with a silent direction to follow. Neil winds his way out, using the bright head of hair as a beacon. They emerge into the street and Neil follows Andrew mechanically to the house. This is a roof that he’s never been on, but he notices that it’s flat.

They stand and then Neil sits, thinking he should make himself smaller and Andrew comfortable. It’s an instinctive move. Only Andrew is following him down, his eyes sharp, something bright in them. He sits in front of Neil and his hands catch his face like an errant butterfly, holding him in place with the lightest touch, the cage of his fingers.

Andrew leans in and Neil is found.

He supposes he’s been found for a long time. Andrew presses against him and his lips erase the blood and fire and pain. He presses out the dust and leaves a flower in its place, dry and dead but beautiful in its permanence. Alive, in another way. Neil shakes and lifts a hand, but he knows better than to touch. He’s not allowed. His hand hangs in the air.

Andrew must feel it, because he backs away. He waits, quiet. Then, “Ask.”

“Can I touch you?” They’re more breath than words. Neil can’t comprehend them. Can’t understand that they’re real.

“Yes.” Andrew takes Neil’s wrist and guides his hand to his face. Waits for Neil to finish closing the distance. Neil is still shaking when he presses his hand to Andrew’s skin.

This is too much. He is real. Somehow soft, cool in hand, the bone under his cheek and the line of his jaw fitting into Neil’s palm like a key to a lock.

“That’s enough,” Andrew says. Neil jerks back and Andrew watches him carefully. He’s not angry. Exasperated, maybe. “Breathe.”

Neil sucks in a breath. He feels dizzy. “No? Or do you not want me to say yes?”

“You’re panicking,” Andrew says shortly. There’s something new in his voice. A thread of tension. Neil feels it like it connects them, drawn out between their bodies after the kiss. _Kiss._

He can still feel it. Andrew’s thumb rests under his lip, not touching, and Neil almost mirrors the movement. Andrew turns his head away, looking toward Eden’s Twilight. He breathes in the night air and Neil feels his chest expand.

“If they call you a monster, I might fight them.”

“You fight everything.”

He’s not wrong.

* * *

He receives a pale white apple sometime in the middle of the night.

Neil looks at it, a warning on his windowsill, and feels his chest ache. For the first time, he has a blinding moment of despair.

_I don’t want to go._

He doesn’t, but the apple calls him. It is untouched. A reminder that he was not so powerful, before. That his enchantment is just the legacy of someone far more dangerous than he.

Neil looks at the apple and knows his father is coming. He picks it up and reaches for a spare dagger—a gift from Renee—and slices the flesh. It is crisp between his fingers. When he bites into it, the taste is sour and raw.

At the core, there are seven seeds. Seven seeds for seven days.

* * *

Neil falls apart every time Andrew touches him.

He likes that he falls apart. He likes that his body is weak and Andrew can unravel him, fingers tracing old scars. Neil breathes in the air that Andrew exhales and curls on his side, his eyes locked on the earthy ones before him.

“What’s your favorite color?” Neil asks.

“Why do you ask questions that don’t matter?”

“Why do you answer them?”

Andrew presses a finger into Neil’s cheek. “…black.”

“Gray,” Neil replies. He closes his eyes when the finger traces a curve under his eye. He can feel it brush his eyelashes.

Andrew leans in to kiss him.

Neil likes when Andrew is the one to start. When he pulls closer because he wants to. His touch is always firm; he commits to touching Neil like it’s one of his promises—a thing that can’t be broken or changed. An absolute.

Neil just gives himself, again and again, and—

—he never feels empty.

* * *

They are at the last match before the tournament, and Neil finds the faces of his father’s men in the crowd.

He has nowhere to run. Nothing to give. All he can do is await the end.

But maybe that’s not all.

Neil slips away from his friends, before they have a chance to notice and before the men can come close. He finds a stall and buys a black hollyhock from the woman there. It is small but beautiful when he holds it, and he thinks of what he will miss.

The pain begins to settle, but he doesn’t let it hold him, yet. Not when he has something left to do.

Neil finds Andrew looking around the crowd for him with dark eyes. The others have just started to unwind from the fight. They are close by when Neil goes to Andrew.

He doesn’t have time. There is no time and he has to say something, before he is gone. Before he leaves for good.

Neil takes the flower and brings it to Andrew’s face. He tucks the stem around Andrew’s ear and wants to stay there forever, with his hand tangled in silk-soft strands of hair. He wants to kiss Andrew until he forgets what is to be apart, or hurt. Until he forgets what he was waiting for.

“Thank you,” Neil says. For the key, the truth, the love. The way he looked at Neil in the mornings and the way his hands were so gentle on skin three-times marked. “You were my always.”

Andrew doesn’t like always. He doesn’t, but Neil says were and Andrew stand still while he tries to figure out what that means. While his fingers go to brush the flower.

Something explodes in the crowd—a mass of smoke and then screams—and Neil feels hands take him away.

He’s glad his last memory is of Andrew, green-brown eyes and a flower in his hair.

* * *

He comes in and out. Along the way, he thinks about the waiting apples and the knives his father will have. He wonders if the enchanted tree has died yet, or if it’s still clinging to life. If anyone noticed the apples tasted different, this year.

Nathaniel is brought to his father. He is brought to the executioner and he has nowhere to run.

He tries to hold back his whimper and scream. He tries to hold back so much, but his father has a cleaver and he’s dressed in black.

No one is going to save him. Nathaniel is expendable. He is no longer needed. The only thing he can give, now, is the blood from his body. When it spills—when he is empty and his body placed atop the mountain—he will make another tree. One that might give the royal family even more power than before.

Nathaniel doesn’t know. No one really knows, just as they never knew Nathaniel could choose to bind his blood. That he could tie his enchantment to those he wanted to, and not those that took from him.

He chose. His choice has led him here, where he will die with the names of his friends on his lips.

“You know what will happen, now,” Nathan says. He runs a hard stone along his blade. The icy sound echoes in Nathaniel’s ears.

Nathaniel does not speak. He is not allowed. Speaking will only make things worse.

He does run. He runs because it is instinct, and because he will not give up his family without trying.

He runs a few feet and someone knocks him down. He screams and thrashes. He hits one of the people holding him in the head; kicks them away and turns in their grip. He punches someone else. He fights with the fury of a life—of _life_ , that he never was allowed or had before.

He has life, now. He has a home.

Nathan doesn’t care. He hauls the blade over his head and prepares to strike.

With his neck shoved onto a wooden block, Neil screams. He screams in rage and fear and sorrow. He screams for Kevin, who may never have the victory he desires. He screams for his teammates, with their smiles and patience and trust.

He screams for Andrew, who would never scream for himself. Andrew, whose touch and voice and lips are the sweetest things Neil has ever known.

He screams until his throat is raw, and then the cleaver comes down.

* * *

The black-hooded figures crowd appear in the shadows. They are silent when they come, and Andrew’s fingers wander toward his daggers.

Wymack stills him. “I know them,” he says, with a voice thin and unsettled. “Neil.”

Kevin looks up from the bar. The colorful bruise on his neck is visible when he lifts his head to find the figures in the rafters. The others draw closer, half in defense and half in anticipation.

One of the figures comes through the front door. They walk to Wymack, a hooked mask obscuring their face.

“We have a deal,” the figure says. “He must honor it.”

“What kind of savior makes a deal for doing the right thing?” Nicky asks. His voice creeps higher, but Allison pulls him back.

The masked figure does not move. Is not moved. Andrew stares at them. They speak again. “He is outside. When the time comes, he will know what to do.”

The figures withdraw. Andrew moves without thinking. He is already out the door before Wymack can call him back. Neil—

—Neil. He is there, barely standing. He is worse than before. There are bandages tight around every inch of skin, stained with faint blooms of red. He is humming with magic. There are new marks on him—lines of angry blades and most importantly, the burned mess of the tattoo that used to rest on his cheek.

“It was my father,” Neil says, before anyone can stop him. Before the Foxes have even taken their places around him. “The executioner.”

Andrew moves to Neil and his hand finds the one place it belongs. The one place he has always been welcomed, right at the base of Neil’s neck. He watches Neil’s lips part and wants to kiss him; to reassure him, to hold him in place. To remind him that he is there, with Andrew, and real.

So blessedly real.

“You don’t have to say anything,” Andrew says. “Not now.”

And for once, Neil listens and doesn’t speak.

* * *

One week until the tournament, Neil has healed. He is whole, but Andrew still finds himself looking and wondering. Wanting to reassure himself, when he has never needed that before.

He kisses Neil in the evening. Neil has his own bedroom; it was out of suspicion, at first. Neil had confessed he didn’t like being locked away, after he came back from the executioner. Andrew took up residence in his bed.

Neil is pliant. He does not go motionless or try to please in a dangerous way. Instead, he molds himself to Andrew’s touch like a key to a lock. He finds every place he needs to fit and somehow manages to get himself there. His leg draws up at Andrew’s waist and his hands rest on Andrew’s face, cupping his jaw like it is as precious as the flower that Andrew still has at his bedside.

Andrew likes to wait for Neil’s mouth to open and run his tongue along every corner. He likes the small noises Neil makes, their harmony echoing in Andrew’s throat.

Tonight, he finds his hands moving further and he leans back. Neil follows him for a moment, his lips parted, but he waits. He looks up at Andrew, wide eyes and trust, and his hands fall to Andrew’s wrists. They rest there, soft and loose.

“What is it?”

“I want you. If—”

“Yes.”

Andrew stops. He wants to say something—needs to—but he can’t. He is too thrown. “You haven’t heard what I have to say. You shouldn’t just say yes.”

“I’m not. I’m saying yes to you,” Neil says. He moves closer, but not to kiss Andrew. He just presses their foreheads together and breathes in. “I will always say yes to you.”

“Don’t say always.”

“Always,” Neil repeats, a flickering smile on his lips.

Andrew shakes his head but kisses Neil anyway.

They have their boundaries. If they didn’t, Andrew would never even try. But they do, so he pulls the clothes away from Neil. Watches him shiver in the moonlight, his body gold and dusted with freckles. They’re like the stars outside, but if Andrew were being poetic, he might call them more beautiful. More precious.

He’s not, so he smooths his hands over Neil’s thighs and watches him shiver. Neil’s touch on Andrew’s collarbone is no longer a sweet exploration; it is a charged exchange, fingertips electric. Andrew thinks the touch could bring him back to life.

Or maybe it already has.

Andrew moves down to Neil’s body. He kisses the dip above his stomach and likes the warmth of the skin there. He moves further down and likes the warmth of Neil’s cock, especially when he flicks a tongue over the head and Neil whimpers at the back of his throat. Andrew likes it all, even if he will not say it.

He can’t say it, but he tries to show it. He tries when he takes Neil in his mouth and loses himself in the taste of skin, because this is as much for him as it is for Neil. It is what Andrew wants, and that is what matters. It matters the way that Neil’s hands twisting in the sheets do. Neil is quiet but he falls apart in rose-colored glory, his chest rising and falling in a rapid beat. He stretches and arches and Andrew can barely keep a steady pace for wanting to watch.

Andrew likes the lines of Neil’s hips. That is where his hands stay, to find purchase and scratch out his name while Neil cries out and Andrew hungrily takes everything. Neil spills into his mouth, an overfilled glass, and Andrew takes it just as he took the blood.

He always wants more. Wants to know more and have more.

And Neil gives it.

He gives so much of him and Andrew almost can’t believe it. Someone drained so dry—someone who has only ever been taken from—willingly gives Andrew everything. Neil does it with a smile and a touch, and Andrew cannot forget that. He will not.

“Okay?” Neil asks. His voice is quiet and rough. Andrew likes the sound.

“Better,” Andrew says. He moves up Neil’s body and finds his eyes—that blue, where he finds more warmth than should be possible. “You always are.”

Neil’s eyes are wet, because he is so emotional for one so long removed. His smile is a fluttering thing, like a bird. He leans up and Andrew kisses him; lets the taste of them mingle and spread.

This is a good thing. Neil is a good thing. For once, Andrew allows himself to have it.

* * *

The tournament is over before it begins.

Riko has no control. He has run his men down too fast and too violently. Without the blood to bolster them, they are drawn and fragmented.

Neil’s first move is to take Jean out of the fight. It is quick and easy, but once it is done, he makes sure Renee follows him off. It will be her job to get him to Wymack—hidden and safe—until the match is over.

Kevin doesn’t hold back. It is a blessing, Neil thinks. He’s not sure if it’s the bond or some other break, but Kevin fights with every breath. He fights until he is nothing but sweat and determination, and then he fights more.

With Andrew at his back, Neil doesn’t even feel the need to look back. He just moves with the others as they systematically disarm the others, and then Kevin knocks Riko back and it’s over all at once.

The crowd is roaring. There is no sense of direction; everything is a burst of energy and amazement. Neil watches the Foxes embrace the moment, and then he sees the shadows in the far corners. The black-clad figures.

Neil moves toward Riko. There is only the enchantment to break. Only the imposter king to dethrone.

“You have never controlled me,” Neil says. He watches Riko’s fury coalesce; sees the way the stripes on his face are more paint than blood. “You never will. From this day forth, you will know that you control nothing. You are a weak, false god with no followers. You are, and have always been, alone.”

Riko’s rage rips apart the stadium. He yells and moves.

This is the moment. This is when it ends. Neil turns his blade and waits.

There are screams when Riko’s blade bites into Neil’s shoulder. But Neil’s blade digs into Riko’s chest, where it finds the blood-red center it was aimed at. Riko is caught, his reign contested and demolished, and Neil feels it fracture in his veins. He feels the phantom echo of a long-buried enchantment crystallize like the glass mountain itself, before it crumbles in a mosaic of broken mirrors.

Riko is dead.

He is dead, and Neil feels the shift the same way he can see the tree change in his mind’s eye.

The apples have gone from red to gold.

“You did it,” Neil says. He turns to Kevin and reaches out, but pauses. Kevin is frozen, shock and uncertainty clear on his features—but there is a new glow around him. A soft light. A change. “You did it, Kevin.”

Kevin presses his lips together. He lets the moment in, and Neil pulls them together. He holds Kevin just for the moment, because Kevin lets him and there is nothing more to do. Nothing left to fight.

Kevin has taken the castle, and Riko’s reign is over.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to all my regular readers and new ones alike! I hope you enjoy my series for Andreil Week 2018. It'll be included in my already-existing AU series, but I'll be finishing the previous series installment once the week is over.


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